Perry Henzell , R.I.P.

Jamaica's first full length film producer Perry Henzell died today at age 70 of cancer. Probably best known for his production of "The Harder They Come", Perry died a poor man. I read an interview he did earlier this year and he lamented about how much money he lost doing Harder They Come, and how he had in fact given up on film as he would never have enough funds to either finish his projects or get them out to a mass market. He also wrote a novel "Power Game" back in the 80's.
His last film production, "No Place Like Home" was meant to be a follow-up to "Harder" and took many, many years of starting and stopping to complete. At one stage he actually lost the raw footage for many years. It is to be screened at a film festival in Jamaica sometime in December.

Ziggy In Concert

Went to see Ziggy Marley perform last week (with the wifey). The show was not too bad at all. I would rate it 8 out of 10. It started promptly at 8pm with his opening act Skye. A black British young lady doing some good folk-pop stuff with just an acoustic guitar, she sounded pretty good and just released her debut CD, kind of Tracy Chapman-ish, but sweeter looking.
The wait for Ziggy was a bit long, but when he did hit the stage he got right into it. The sound was nice and clean except for a few mishaps that perhaps only a sound guy like me would notice. The band was tight and it was really great to still see Sticky Thompson out there on percussion. 35+ years of touring and still going strong! Ziggy hit the ATL after canceling his two weekend shows because of Bronchitis.. You could see that he wasn't quite 100% back, but he still put on a top-notch show. He really got deep into the vibes when doing his own personal material, though he just seem to go on auto pilot when he did Bob's and ZMM songs. "Lookin" is really GREAT live, so was "True To Myself" and "Be Free".
For those of you that don’t know (but still care to find out), Ziggy recently married a Jewish young lady and now resides in Israel. It is rumored that he is actually converting to Judaism but keeping the locks. During the entire show there was absolutely NO mention of Jah, Rastafari or Selassie. Very strange for a Marley production, I was however quite happy to get a break from all of that crap.
The wife and I met him briefly after the show, he has lost a lot of weight but claims to be exercising regularly now. We also met Sticky, Erica Newell, and Grandpa (of Morgan Heritage) back stage as well. Decent show, can’t complain.

Another One

Another yankee excuse for a holiday is upon us, Turkey Day. Giving thanks for slaughtering thousands of Native American Indians and stealing their land with all that comes with it.
All these “holidays” are ALWAYS somehow tied to consumption, the average Joe having to dig into his pocket and make expected purchases. Food in this case, gifts in a few weeks at Xmas, party stuff come New Years, Flowers and Chocolate come Valentines, eggs and bunnies come Easter, BBQ junk come Memorial Day, fireworks and more BBQ stuff come July 4th, even more BBQ stuff come Labor Day in September, Halloween costumes come October.
It just gets to be so sickening year after year. I know the entire economy is totally dependent on the public’s continuous consumption of goods and services and not just a particular industry like say Caribbean countries, but after a while you realize that 90% of your purchases are just dyam garbage. It’s bad enough that some of these “holidays” don’t even give you a day off of work, but you still have to go out and buy de dyam foolishness too?
Yes migrating to Uncle Sam land is a trade off and you do always make the effort to surround yourself with as much of your home country’s trappings as you can so as to at least try and have the best of both worlds, but sometimes you wake up and de cold lik yu and de pickney a beg fi dis and dat because her friends have it, then you wonder to yourself “Was it all worth it? What if I had stayed?”